own extended title, they are designated "Ad Joannem Rousium, Oxoniensis Academia Bibliothecarium: De Libro Poematum amisso, quem ille sibi denuo mitti postulabat, ut cum aliis nostris in Bibliothecâ publicâ reponeret: Ode." ("To John Rous, Librarian of the "University of Oxford: concerning a lost Book of Poems, of "which he asked a fresh copy to be sent him, that he might

replace it with others of ours in the public Library: An Ode.") The circumstances here indicated may be explained exactly :There is still in the Bodleian an old bound volume containing all Milton's pamphlets that had been published before 1645, and the following inscription, indubitably in Milton's own hand, on a blank leaf at the beginning: "Doctissimo viro, proboque librorum æstimatori, Joanni Rousio, Oxoniensis Academia Bibliothecario, gratum hoc sibi fore testanti, Joannes Miltonus opuscula hæc sua, in Bibliothecam antiquissimam atque celeberrimam adsciscenda libens tradit, tanquam in memoriæ perpetuæ fanum, emeritamque, uti sperat, invidiæ calumniæque vacationem, si Veritati Bonoque simul Eventui satis litatum sit. Sunt autem :-De Reformatione Angliæ, Lib. 2 ; De Episcopatu Prælatico, Lib. 1; De Ratione Politiæ Ecclesiastica, Lib. 2; Animadversiones in Remonstrantis Defensionem, Lib. 1; Apologia, Lib. 1; Doctrina et Disciplina Divortii, Lib. 2 ; Judicium Buceri de Divortio, Lib. 1; Colasterion, Lib. 1; Tetrachordon, in aliquot præcipua Scripturæ loca de Divortio Instar, Lib. 4; Areopagitica, sive de Libertate Typographia Oratio; De Educatione Ingenuorum Epistola; Poemata Latina et Anglicana, seorsim." ("To "the most learned man and good judge of Books, John Rous, "Librarian of the University of Oxford, on his testifying that this "would be agreeable to him, John Milton gladly gives these "small works of his, to be taken into the most ancient and "celebrated library, as into a temple of perpetual memory, "and so, as he hopes, into a merited freedom from ill-will "and calumny, if satisfaction enough be paid to Truth and at "the same time to Good Fortune. They are 'Of Reformation "in England,' two Books; 'Of Prelatical Episcopacy,' one "Book; "Of the Reason of Church Government,' two Books; "Animadversions on the Remonstrant's Defence,' one Book; "Apology against the same,' one Book; 'The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce,' two Books; 'The Judgment of Bucer

"on Divorce,' one Book; Colasterion,' one Book; 'Tetra"chordon, an exposition of some chief places of Scripture concerning Divorce,' four Books; 'Areopagitica, or a Speech for the "Freedom of the Press ;' 'An Epistle on Liberal Education ;' and "Latin and English Poems,' separate.") This inscription tells the story so far. Milton, at Rous's request, had sent him, for the Bodleian, in 1646, a set of his published writings complete to that date; to wit, the eleven controversial Prose-pamphlets of 1641-4, and the edition of his Poems in English and Latin published by Moseley in the end of 1645. Of these, however, only the Prosepamphlets had reached their destination; the Poems had been lost or stolen on their way to Oxford, or had otherwise gone astray. Rous, accordingly, both in his own behalf and in the interest of the Library, begs for another copy, to make the set of Milton's writings complete, as had been intended. Milton complies with the request, and sends a second copy of the Poems. But, amused by the incident of the loss of the first, he composes a Latin Ode on the subject; and a transcript of this Ode, carefully written out on a sheet of paper by himself, or some one else, in an Italian hand, he causes to be inserted in the second copy, between the English and the Latin contents of the volume. Accordingly, there are now in the Bodleian two volumes of Milton's writings, his own gift to the Library. One is the volume of the eleven collected Prose-pamphlets enumerated above, and with the inscription above copied, in Milton's undoubted autograph; the other is the supplementary volume of his Poems, sent to Rous, "ut cum aliis nostris reponeret" ("that he might replace it beside our other things "), and containing the Ode to Rous in an inserted sheet of MS., generally supposed to be also Milton's autograph, in an unusual form of laboured elegance, but probably, I think, a transcript by some calligraphist whom he employed. If Warton's story is true, there was a danger, about 1720, that these two volumes would be lost to the Bodleian. With a number of other small volumes, chiefly duplicates, they were thrown aside; and Mr. Nathaniel Crynes, then one of the Esquire Bedels, and a book-collector, was allowed to pick what he chose out of the heap, on the understanding that he was to bestow some equivalent on the Library in the form of a bequest. By good

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luck Mr. Crynes did not care for the two Milton volumes, and so they went back to the Library. Even had they disappeared, however, we should still have had the Ode to Rous. Milton had kept a copy of it, and had added it to his Latin Poems in the edition of 1673.

The Ode is a curious one, in respect of both its form and its matter.―The form, as Milton takes care to explain in a note (appended in his edition, though now more conveniently prefixed), is peculiarly arbitrary. It is a kind of experiment in Latin, after few classical precedents in that language, of the mixed verse, or verse of various metres, common in the Greek choral odes. Even within that range Milton has taken liberties at the bidding of his own ear, paying regard, as he says, rather to facility of reading than to ancient rule. Hence, for example, the Phalæcian or Hendecasyllabic lines introduced will be found exceedingly irregular. Altogether, the experiment was rather daring.-The matter of the ode is simple enough. It is addressed not directly to Rous, but to the little volume itself. The double contents of the volume, Latin and English, are spoken of in modest terms; the loss of the first copy, mysteriously abstracted from the bundle of its brothers, when they were on their way from London to Oxford, is playfully mentioned, with wonder what had become of it and into what rough hands it may have fallen; Rous's friendly interest, both in having repeatedly applied at first for the whole set of writings and in having applied again for the missing volume, is acknowledged; and there are the due applauses of Oxford and her great Library. In this last connexion there is an amplification of what had been hinted in the inscription in the volume of the Prose-pamphlets. The time would come, he had there hoped, when even his Prose-pamphlets, now procuring him nothing but ill-will and calumny, might be better appreciated. This hope he now repeats more strongly with reference to his Poems. The following is Cowper's translation of the Epode, or closing strain :

"Ye, then, my works, no longer vain
And worthless deemed by me,
Whate'er this sterile genius has produced,
Expect at last, the rage of envy spent,
An unmolested, happy home,

Gift of kind Hermes, and my watchful friend,
Where never flippant tongue profane
Shall entrance find,

And whence the coarse unlettered multitude
Shall babble far remote.

Perhaps some future distant age,
Less tinged with prejudice, and better taught,
Shall furnish minds of power
To judge more equally.

Then, malice silenced in the tomb,
Cooler heads and sounder hearts,

Thanks to Rous, if aught of praise
I merit, shall with candour weigh the claim."

EPIGRAMS ON SALMASIUS.

Salmasius is a great name in the Biography of Milton. The person called by it, according to the custom, then common in the scholarly world of Europe, of Latinizing the names of its important members, was Claude de Saumaise, a Frenchman, born in 1588, and therefore Milton's senior by about twenty years. From his earliest youth he had been a prodigious reader; and by a series of publications, partly in France and partly in Germany, some against the Papal power, but others more purely historical and antiquarian, he had acquired the fame of being perhaps the most learned European scholar of his generation. Princes and States contended for the honour of possessing and pensioning him; but, after various travels, he had taken up his residence chiefly at Leyden, in Holland. Thus brought into contact with Charles II. and the English Royalist exiles after the execution of Charles I., he had been employed or induced, in an evil hour for himself, to write a defence of the late King and an attack on the English Commonwealth. It appeared in Holland in 1649, under the title of Defensio Regia pro Carolo I. A book of the kind by a man of his fame was felt in England to be a serious matter; and Milton, then Foreign Secretary to the Council of State, was requested to answer it. He did so in his famous Defensio pro Populo Anglicano contra Claudii Salmasii Defensionem Regiam, published in the end of 1650, or beginning of 1651. Soon all Europe rang from side to side with the power of this pamphlet ;

and the legend is that Salmasius, who had recently gone to reside at the Court of Sweden on the pressing invitation of the eccentric Queen Christina, was so chagrined at the applause with which the pamphlet was everywhere received, and especially by Christina's consequent coldness to himself, that he soon afterwards died. He did quit Sweden, and return to Holland, where he died Sept. 3, 1653, leaving an unfinished reply to Milton, and the task of continuing the controversy to other persons. Among these was the Gallo-Scot, Alexander More or Morus, already mentioned in the introduction to the brief epigram De Moro among the Latin Elegies. Milton's Defensio Secunda pro Populo Anglicano, published in 1654, was in reply to a treatise of the same year, which More was supposed to have written, but which he had only seen through the press, entitled Regii Sanguinis Clamor adversus Parricidas Anglicanos. In this "Second Defence," though More was the person directly attacked, Milton went back upon his dead opponent Salmasius. Hence, while the first of the two Epigrams against Salmasius now under notice is from the original pamphlet against the living Salmasius (called now, generally, the Defensio Prima), the second is from the Defensio Secunda, in which More receives the direct attack and Salmasius is only recollected for posthumous chastisement.

IN SALMASII HUNDREDAM.—This Epigram occurs in the 8th chapter of the Defensio Prima, and is a rough jest against Salmasius for his parade of his knowledge of a few English lawterms, or terms of public custom, such as "County Court," and "Hundred" or 66 Hundreda," in the sense of a division of a shire or an aggregation of parishes. "Where did Salmasius, that magpie, get his scraps of bad English, and especially his Hundreda ?" asks the Epigram. Why, he got a hundred Jaco"buses, the last in the pouch of the poor exiled King, for writing "his pamphlet ! The prospect of more cash would make him write "up the very Pope, and sing the Song of the Cardinals, though he

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once demonstrated the Papacy to be Antichrist." Such is the substance of the Epigram; a poor thing after all, and a mere momentary parody of the last seven lines of the Prologue to the Satires of Persius. They may be given here for the sake of comparison :

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